NYIndex: NYU and AOL’s Leaders Grab Attention

Two leaders of large organizations – John Sexton, the president of New York University and Tim Armstrong, the Chairman and CEO of AOL – rose up the NYIndex this week.

Bloomberg News

Tim Armstrong, chief executive officer of AOL Inc., speaks at the Society of American Business Editors and Writers spring conference in Washington, D.C. in April.

Mr. Armstrong was in the news after he fired a subordinate, live, while addressing the workforce of Patch, the company’s network of local news sites. He has since apologized for the incident, which he called an ‘emotional response.’ The company is making extensive cuts at Patch, expected to reach 500 of the company’s 1,100 employees. Mr. Armstrong is 17 in the NY Index’s overall rankings of New York’s 100 most influential people and second in the technology category.

Mr. Sexton was in the news after it was announced that he would step down as president of New York University when his term ends in 2016. The announcement came on the heels of a New York Times article that outlined the university’s loans to star professors for second homes. Shortly afterwards a group called ‘NYU Faculty Against the Sexton Plan’ called for the resignation of renowned corporate lawyer Marty Lipton as Chairman of the NYU Board of Trustees, after Mr. Sexton wrote a letter to the editor in support of Mr. Sexton after the article was published. Mr. Sexton is second in the Education category and 87 in the overall ranking.

Last week, scoring in the NYIndex was updated to better track how recent news events affect newsmakers’ rankings. Newsmakers will be scored using media mentions over the past six weeks. Similarly, the graphics that chart newsmakers’ scores will reflect changes over the past six months.

The NYIndex ranks individuals on the basis of an influence score generated by media-archive service Factiva, as well as the contribution of their industry to the gross domestic product, and their social media activity.

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